Despite our best efforts no piece of software is ever 100% safe from malfunctioning. Cosmic Supremacy has been beta tested for almost two years. During that time a great deal of attention has been paid towards server and client stability. However, Cosmic Supremacy keeps on evolving and new features are added regularly. Because of that we can't entirely rule out the possibilty of bugs or even crashes. To that end we have put a system in place that tries to catch malfunctioning behavior early, and present valueable information in a window that helps determine the cause of this event.

During execution it is possible that so-called Assert-Windows pop up, which usually occurs when something unexpected happens in the program. These events are written into a log file. You can send us that file named 'log.txt', together with a short description of what lead to the error, to asserts@cosmicsupremacy.com

Cosmic Supremacy creates a log file every time you run the application. In it it stores progess notifications, as well as warnings and errors, should there occur any.

The log.txt file can be found at the following location:
%appdata%\Cosmic Supremacy\
Copy and paste this line into a Windows Explorer.

The %appdata% part is automatically translated by Windows into 'C:\Documents and Settings\{UserName}\Application Data' (depening on your Windows version). This is the place where Windows applications are supposed to write their data.

You can configure your computer to automatically create so-called Crash-Dump Files every time an application on your computer crashes. These are especially helpful to the programmer, as they contain a lot of useful information as of why the error occurred. To activate automatic crash-dump file creation you need to change a setting in your registry. The following .reg file will do that for you:

File Name: CrashDump.reg Download Size: 1,20 KB Date Published: 30.10.2017

Download the file and run it on your computer.

Now, if an Assert or any other type of crash should happen while playing Cosmic Supremacy, press the 'Retry' button, which forces a controlled software-crash, which will cleanly shut-down the application and create file named 'CrashDump.dmp' on your 'C:\' drive. Please send those to crashdumps@cosmicsupremacy.com. Those files can be packed pretty well, so we recommend zipping them before you send them as a mail.

Attention: Do not use this method on Windows Vista or higher!

Starting with Windows Vista the operating system has a built in ability to create crash-dumps for you in case any application crashes. If Cosmic Supremacy crashes, open the Task Manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC), go to the 'Processes' tab, and find the entry for CosmicSupremacy.exe. Right-click and select 'Create dump file' from the context menu. These crash dumps are especially helpful to the programmer, as they contain a lot of useful information as of why the error occurred.

Please send the crashump file to crashdumps@cosmicsupremacy.com. Those files can be packed pretty well, so we recommend zipping them before you send them as a mail.

The most important factor that is required to keep Cosmic Supremacy (or any game for that matter) run stable, is updating your graphics drivers to the latest available version. In rare cases it may appear as if the game stops working (or crashing) from one day to another. The cause for this is often the graphics driver being pushed to its 'limit' - as your empire grows, and you have more and more planets and ships visible in the Galaxy Map, this might reveal bugs in the graphics driver that might not come into affect for a galaxy that is started from scratch with only a few space objects visible.

If you do not know the maker and the name of the 3D chip inside your computer, use 'DXDIAG'. 'DXDIAG' is a diagnosis tool coming with the Direct-X suite. You can run it by clicking 'Run' in your 'Start' menu, and enter the word 'DXDIAG' in the command-prompt. Navigate to the 'Display' tab, and find 'Chip-Type' and 'Manufacturer'. On the internet find the manufacturers' webpage and head for the 'Drivers' section. Download and install a suitable driver.

If despite updating to the latest drivers your machine keeps having troubles with performance or the occasional crash, this is usually related to the 'Territory Calculator' or the 'Planet Surface Calculator', which both run in the background and use a considerable amount of CPU time. Some low end computers might have troubles with that. If that is the case with your machine, you can disable both features using the following registry keys:

File Name: DisableTerritory.reg Download Size: 246,00 Bytes Date Published: 30.10.2017

File Name: DisablePlanetSurfaces.reg Download Size: 256,00 Bytes Date Published: 30.10.2017

The following keys will enable both features again:

File Name: EnableTerritory.reg Download Size: 246,00 Bytes Date Published: 30.10.2017

File Name: EnablePlanetSurfaces.reg Download Size: 256,00 Bytes Date Published: 30.10.2017

Download the file and run it on your computer, which will set up the appropriate registry setting. Depending on your browser you might have to right click the link and press 'Save' in order to download the file.